


Navigations

by fireflysglow_archivist



Category: Firefly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-03-22
Updated: 2007-03-22
Packaged: 2019-04-29 13:49:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14474037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fireflysglow_archivist/pseuds/fireflysglow_archivist
Summary: Kaylee, post 'Objects in Space'.





	Navigations

**Author's Note:**

> Note from alice ttlg, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [Firefly’s Glow](https://fanlore.org/wiki/Firefly%27s_Glow), and was moved to the AO3 as part of the Open Doors project in 2018. I tried to reach out to all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are the creator and would like to claim this work, please contact me using the e-mail address on [Firefly's Glow collection profile](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/fireflysglow/profile).
> 
>  **Author's notes:** spoilers for 'Objects in Space': deals with canonical references to rape and sexual assault.

  
Author's notes: spoilers for 'Objects in Space': deals with canonical references to rape and sexual assault.  


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Navigations

## Navigations

On Kaylee's homeworld, you didn't see much of the stars, most places. It was an industrial planet and her dad ran a workshop in one of its bigger valley towns, full of the complicated chatter of machines, rising and falling round every corner, the smell of oil and warm metal. The sky was purple in the day and brown in the night, soft smoke thick like a blanket over the town. You could see a shadowy point of light peeking through, sometimes, if you tipped your head right back and strained hard enough, but you never knew if it was a star or a ship or what. 

So the first time Kaylee saw the stars for real was when she was fifteen, up on the hills with a boy. It was a make-out spot, that was what everyone went there for, that was what they'd gone up there for with a flask of sneaked-out brew and a blanket, but instead they ended up spending hours, honest-to-god, just lying side by side on the blanket and looking up. 

At first, she'd been kind of creeped out by the sight - space, bigger than anything she'd seen before, with points of light scattered through at random, like something bright got broke and left useless bits everywhere. But then the boy had started softly spelling out constellations, sketching them with his bony, awkward hands, made fluent in this, and she had seen, suddenly, the way the stars broke up the black, made paths and patterns in it. 

The boy had been pretty and shy and smart, the secret kind of smart, though he was too hopelessly clumsy to be much good with engines; she had kissed him, she thought, either that night or some other time, and it had been good, but what she really remembered about him were his voice and his hands, describing the intricate combinations of stars, turning together. 

Out in space, though, there aren't any constellations. Just the black. There isn't any pattern, out there, there isn't any path. Just Reavers and monsters and drifting, useless debris, and when she runs from the warm, lit kitchen to the warm lit engine room she keeps her eyes away from the windows, lets her hands brush Serenity's humming, friendly walls, listens out for the Captain's voice. She won't look out there, to the black, where anything could happen. 

_Have you ever been raped?_

River doesn't understand her about the stars. She loves them. She says they dance for her, with her, in her. She says they talk to her. And that's well and good, and Kaylee loves her for it, but River doesn't understand. Shielded and strange as she is, she can laugh at the dark, get in its head and make it run. Kaylee's just a girl; River will never quite know what that means. 

Inara, though, Inara makes her tea and sits her down on her incredibly soft bed, tells her all manner of stories. Some make her laugh till she has to grab onto a pillow for support, and some make her stomach clench, make her lean back against Inara's soft, strong body, Inara's hands gentle as they gather up her hair. Inara's seen a lot, and no fear that she won't understand. But Inara's leaving. 

_There's nobody can help you._

Some days, nights, she still dreams that the dark breaks into Serenity - creeps in through the airlock on long legs, a red spider come walking up the bridge looking for her. She can be kneeling by the engine working, late at night with the crew in bed, when she'll feel it twitch over her shoulder. Or, sitting in a corner with her feet in Simon's lap, his hands stroking idly over her ankle, she'll suddenly see, in a flash, how big and square those hands are, how easily they could turn and grip and pin her there. 

_Ain't nothing but a body to me._

She has to make her hands keep working, those times, keep them steady, bite her lip and strain not look over her shoulder. She has to keep breathing and not twist away from Simon, who's ducking his head and smiling his big goofy smile, his thumb very lightly brushing the bone in her ankle. It's hard, so hard sometimes. Still. She can make him blush so easy, she thinks, just by raising her eyebrows or quirking her grin exactly the right way. She can make him laugh helplessly, like a kid, by showing him that trick she can do with her toes. Her hands do good work, and she watches them at it sometimes, seeing the particular calluses on her thumb and pinky finger from her grip on the tools she uses, the smudge of grease on her wrist and palm, the way her hands just move to fit a wire or solder a part, easy as breathing. 

_You pull off any one of a thousand parts, she'll just die._

True enough, but it's not that simple. Serenity's more than a thousand parts, more than two thousand, and they all interconnect in intricate patterns, hundreds of linked and intersecting pathways. She's hard to kill, Kaylee knows, Kaylee with her hands in her working heart - who is her heart or near enough, it feels like, even if she can't get into her head. Late at night, when all the crew are asleep and there's a crick in her back from crouching too long, she'll step out on the bridge to breathe for a while, and she can look out of the window then. _There's nobody can help me_. Well, she'll think, watching the lit, turning path she and her girl are cutting through the black. Maybe. Right now, these nights, with the job well done, there's nobody's help she needs to keep them all going.

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Title:   **Navigations**   
Author:   **solvent90**   
Details:   **Standalone**  |  **PG-13**  |  **gen**  |  **5k**  |  **03/22/07**   
Characters:  Kaylee   
Summary:  Kaylee, post 'Objects in Space'.   
Notes:  spoilers for 'Objects in Space': deals with canonical references to rape and sexual assault.   
  



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